Page 152 of Hidden Kingdoms

Taking in a shaky breath, I started. “After my parents died, I grew up with my Nanna. I don’t remember much about them. For as long as I can remember, we both had magik. Not a lot, and nothing like I can feel since being here, but enough. She taught me how to use it, how to make wards, help the plants grow, things like that. It was just part of my life, and I never questioned why we had magik and no one else did. Nanna’s friend Briar would visit us. She also had magik, and she would teach me things.”

“But humans can’t use magik,” Big Man stated, face creased in confusion as he listened.

“Apparently so. But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not human.” I watched the slow embers that burned in his eyes and pressed on. “According to Arden, I’m Fae. And I’m also an Anomaly.”

“No fucking way,” Bastian spat as his eyebrow flew wide.

“Continue, Goldie.”

Squeezing the rock in my hand, I carried on with my story. “He tested me, and unless you dispute that, thenyes fucking way. I don’t know how I ended up back home, whether someone sent me there or I found my way there somehow. I don’t even know if Nanna is really my family.” My voice broke slightly, heart cracking at the thought. I ached to see her again despite the anger I felt at the lie that was my life.

“What else has Arden so helpfully found out during your short time together?”

Ignoring his most holy dickhead, I turned to Kaius, focusing on his stormy eyes as they silently encouraged me to continue.

“I would have these dreams. I would see things play out in front of me minutes before they happened. Every reading I did would spill secrets I had no right knowing. Nanna toldme there was nothing to them, just dreams. But Briar… Briar would ask. Always pushed me to explore it. And I did when I was younger. But as I grew, I got more and more disinterested, convinced myself that everything was a coincidence, or forced myself to forget what I had seen. As I got older, those things just kind of faded out.” I swallowed down the embarrassment at my complete refusal to acknowledge what was right under my eyes.

Maybe there was more to it than a conscious decision to ignore all the signs.

“Oraculum,” Kaius murmured. At my small nod of agreement, something I didn’t understand flashed in his eyes before they darted towards Bastian.

I held my breath waiting for their reaction.

“You’re a seer.”

“Yes.” My voice was barely more than a whisper as my magik raced to soothe me, caressing my nerves as I sat tense in their presence. The vulnerability I was showing them hard to process. Heat bloomed behind me for a moment before it fell away, leaving an unexpected chill at its loss, but I kept my focus ahead.

This could be it, the moment it all changes. The moment they decide I don’t belong, even here.

“A seer.” Bastian’s voice was hard as granite, the words forced from his lips. “Well, what can you do then?”

“What can I do? What are you expecting, some sort of magik trick? To pull a rabbit out of a fucking hat?”

“I was expecting more.” His eyes dragged over me with barely concealed resentment, and it took everything in me not to shrink from his gaze.

More. Of course they wanted more. Of course I wouldn’t be enough.

“I don’t know what I can do,” I bit back while knowing I had to tell them what I did know.

“There’s something else,” I started before I lost the nerve to keep talking. “Someone put a block on my mind. Arden thinks that’s why I never questioned all the things that now don’t make sense to me.”

Curses dropped from both their mouths, and Kaius’ eyes flew wide, one hand reaching to claw back the waves of dark hair that fell into his face.

“That’s big, Goldie. That’s fucking huge.” I watched the shock play across his face before he, too, downed the remainder of his drink.

“How are you even alive?” I twisted towards Bastian, blinking at him blankly, unsure of what he was going on about now.

“Fae cannot live for large periods of time in the mortal realm before their magik becomes poisoned. You must have crossed back over for you to even be sitting here now, let alone with a hold on your power. And you had to have been born here, too.”

“I don’t know. I’m starting to think there are many things I’ve been forced to forget.”

“Arden has confirmed this. This block?”

“Yes. He said he would help me to try remove it, but that he might not be strong enough.” Something ever so slightly resembling concern flickered across Bastian’s face before Kaius’ deep voice spoke.

“If he can’t, then I will find someone who will.” The sincerity in his voice made my skin prickle with goosebumps. A dark edge to the air around me crept in. I was itching to reach across and touch him, but kept my hands fisted around the rock that apparently caused all my most recent problems.

Strange how something so small can make such a huge impact in my life. Maybe that blame lies on the one who sent them my way in the first place.

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